1503. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 159–160.
[London]
Jan. 11. 1844
My dear Mr Westwood,
I have certainly seemed to delay unduly with my grateful acknowledgements for the double honor you have paid me, .. both in giving me your book, & naming me in it in such high connection [1] .. I have seemed so to myself at least. But the reason lay in my desire to give some calm attention to the work before I spoke of it—that I might thank you for the public’s part in it, & mine together—and what with more than enough to do in other ways, & what with this weakness which wont let me do what I like, .. even now I have scarcely lived as long in your flowers, as a right good bee should do under the circumstances. I have explored however so much of the honey as to guess at the rest; I have, in unmetaphorical fact, read your volume through, & one or two or three of the poems oftener than once through; & now I must come to thank you (though you kindly say ‘Dont come’—but after all I am not supernatural in ingratitude) for the grace & melody of the verses, & also for the especial favor which shines past them upon me, I may tell you—may I not? .. that I am pleased—& that I thank you heartily? And now that you have set me up so high,—like a child on a chimneypiece, .. I must take care not to fall down.
For the book, it is full, as I have said, of melody & grace; &, if I say the words over again, it is because they seem to suit it so well. I have several favorite poems—the ‘Invocation,’ (which has its own sweetness) to begin with; & ‘Spring’; which comes next, with a higher & more swelling tone; & the ‘Mill-song,’ & the Wind, & the ‘Parlour Fire,’ .. but my favorite in the whole book, I think, must be confessed to be the ‘Birth song of the Flowers.’ I almost wish you had worked out the idea in it more at length, & placed it conspicuously– And without wishing anything, & taking it as it is, I congratulate you on the quaint grace (there is the word again!) & spring life of the thoughts in it–
“But, sister Lily, dost thou see
Cowslip peeping oer the lea?”
It takes my fancy, this gossipping of the flowers—and I like to hear
“There is kingcup in the meadow
And sweet Marguerite too.” [2]
I like the ‘Holly tree’ besides—and the “Fire”, as I said before,—but why not, in that last, some “melodious tear” over poor Charles Lamb?– [3] I expected it to drop all the way I read, I assure you.
And now, dear Mr Westwood, it is only left to me to wish to you the smoothing of the brows of all possible critics, & the lighting of the smiles of all possible readers! It was not good natured of you to apply my words about “books” & “shelves” so. [4] You know as well as I do, how the plague of rhymers, & of bad rhymers, is upon the land—and it was only three weeks ago, that, at a “Literary Institute” at Brighton I heard of the Reverend somebody Stoddart gravely proposing “Poetry for the Million” to his audience, .. he assuring them, … that “poets made a mystery of their art, .. but that in fact, nothing except an English grammar & a rhyming dictionary & some instruction about counting on the fingers, was necessary, in order to make a poet of any man.”!!!! [5]
This is fact. And to this extent, has the Art, once called divine, [6] been desecrated among the educated classes of our country.
Ever sincerely yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
I am glad the book reached you safely [7] —but I was not uneasy about its doing so ultimately.
Publication: LEBB, I, 162 (in part, as “Undated”).
Manuscript: British Library.
1. In the preface to Beads from a Rosary, Westwood wrote: “as there are blossoms whose beauty we could ill spare … so there are singers, whose province it is to take up the faintest and most dying tones in the great world-chorus, yet who could not well be silent, without bringing abruptly to a close the soft cadence of the song. It may be urged, indeed, that the name of such singers is Legion, and it were vain to deny this;—still … I trust I may be forgiven for adding to their number.... Lofty utterances, there are still;—Barrett, Tennyson, Macaulay, ye witness to this—utterances, which awake the soul’s deepest and finest echoes,—but, alas! they do but make us sigh the more, in that they are heard only after long intervals” (pp. ix–x).
2. These two quotations from “The Birth-Song of the Flowers” are found on pp. 46 and 47 of his book.
3. Milton, “Lycidas” (1638), line 14. Westwood had told EBB about Lamb lodging with his family in letter 1411.
5. We have not been able to identify Mr. Stoddart or to ascertain details of his lecture.
6. “It [poetry] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness” (The Two Books of Francis Bacon. Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, 1605, II, 18).
7. Horne’s tragedies, misdirected to Cheshunt, acknowledged by Westwood in letter 1501.
___________________
